Programming Languages Books

I bought this book because of the hype around web services. I wanted to learn what they were and how they were different from simple web applications (ASP stype). This book really helped me understand what web services or e-services are and how they can be used in a solution. The book also spent a good amount of time explaining architectural nuances that need to be considered when developing a web service solution. For example, what security considerations to make, issues around scalability, service registry technologies. The book takes a solution perspective rather than a technology perspective, I found a lot of value in it regarding how to build web service solutions. The last part of the book discussed the competitive landscape (gave quite some history as well) and also shared thoughts on the evolution of e-speak into the web services platform. A good read if you want a primer on web services, their architecture or the competitive space. I strongly recommend reading this book to get a perspective on web services and the much-hyped value proposition before buying one of the very technical reference guide texts available.

It was a great experience , learning from this book. All the technicalities have been explained in simple language. Content is highly practical for new learners as well as advanced programmers.

First a disclaimer; I am one of the originators of e-speak, the technology described in this book. That means you should question favorable comments I make about the technology. It also means that I appreciate how hard it was to write a book that describes e-speak as clearly as this one does.

E-speak started at the end of 1995 as a research project at Hewlett-Packard's research division. At that time, there was no such thing as web services, XML was just being defined, and e-commerce was browser-centric. Our goal was to define an infrastructure that hid much of the complexity of developing Internet-based businesses. We succeeded (watch out here), but our solution required thinking about things in a new way. That made explaining e-speak difficult.

The authors of this book succeed in explaining web services, what e-speak is, why you should use it, and how to use it. Neither too formal nor too whimsical, the presentation strikes the proper balance between presenting facts and explaining concepts, doing both in a very readable fashion.

The book opens by explaining what web services are and the benefits of developing businesses around them. The book ends with a review of comparable technologies, the competitive landscape, and prognistications about the future. These sections alone are worth the price of the book.

The bulk of the book is about using e-speak's Java programming interface to develop e-services. (Read the book to see why I didn't say web services.) Rather than present an encyclopedic list of all the features, the authors take the example of a travel service. Each chapter adds a new twist, more functionality or better security, for example. In this way, the reader is led to understand both the benefits each feature provides and the code for using the feature. All the major parts of e-speak are included, but the reader never feels inundated with unnecessary detail.

If you're interested in web services and how they will affect the way business is done, read the opening and closing chapters. If you'd like to build an e-service, this book gives you a jump start. Most importantly, this book will give you an understanding of the concepts, something that is more important to success than just learning the technology.

The title of Dennis Gaskill's book, _Web Site Design Made Easy_, says it all. He did his best to make it easy to grasp the concepts, and he succeeded. He wanted students and do-it-yourself web designers to understand how to create web pages using CSS and (X)HTML coding rather than relying on tables to position page elements on their web sites. The old style of using tables to control the visual appearance of web pages is now self-defeating.

Web designers ignoring CSS simply don't realize its importance. Whether they're coding for their own "Web Dreams" or for clients, designers dismissing CSS's significance do so at their own peril. Now that browsers embrace CSS more consistently, relying on tables rather than the somewhat more complicated CSS for (X)HTML layout is foolhardy.

Why?

Because of the magic word "Accessibility." A lot of folks don't realize that search engine robots (can you say, "Google"?) read (X)HTML code the same way assistive technologies do. Robots "read," they don't "see."

CSS allows you to create visually pleasing web pages which are optimized for search engines and assistive technologies. What more could you ask for? That's why CSS is a dream come true for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In addition, user agents (e.g., browsers, screen readers, handhelds, cell phones, etc.) can "read" your site more easily if you employ CSS and (X)HTML to create valid, well-formed (i.e., well-structured), accessible web sites for them.

More and more folks are interacting with the Internet without using a personal computer. They're using many different types of user agents. They won't, and sometimes can't, visit your site if your coding doesn't make them welcome.

Don't turn away traffic because you think CSS is too hard. It's not, Dennis made it easy. His books are used as classroom texts in high schools, colleges, and tech schools all over this country. He wrote _Web Site Design Made Easy_ specifically to TEACH students and do-it-yourself learners. He wants to help you help yourself succeed as a designer. And you can, with his help.

The Preface explains that nothing other than an understanding of how to use the Internet is expected of you. Dennis will show you, in easy steps, how to create a web site. "...This book mainly focuses on teaching HTML coding and formatting using CSS, utilizing both IBM Windows and Macintosh. Other areas are touched upon, but these basic skills will carry your student a long way toward their goal of website design...."

Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Internet and Web Design
Chapter 2: An Overview of HTML, XHTML, and CSS
Chapter 3: HTML Kick-start
Chapter 4: CSS Kick-start
Chapter 5: Text Formatting
Chapter 6: Applying Styles to Text Elements
Chapter 7: Applying Styles to Other Elements
Chapter 8: Color, Backgrounds, and Images
Chapter 9: Links and Multimedia
Chapter 10: Creating Lists
Chapter 11: Tables
Chapter 12: Frames
Chapter 13: Forms
Chapter 14: Creating an XHTML Document
Chapter 15: Good Design
Chapter 16: Publishing Your Web Site
Chapter 17: An Overview of Other Technologies
Chapter 18: Bonus Chapter
Appendix A: HTML and XHTML Charts
Appendix B: Cascading Style Sheets Charts
Appendix C: Color Charts
Appendix D: ASCII Character Chart
Appendix E: Troubleshooting
Glossary
Index

I've been visiting Dennis's BoogieJack web site since 1999. I enjoy his monthly low-key e-zine, Almost A Newsletter. I own two of his books, plus our library's Branch Manager bought two of his books for our library. So, yeah, I'm biased. But that doesn't change the fact that he's a great teacher who knows what he's teaching and makes it fun while he's doing it.

_Web Site Design Made Easy_ is definitely worth five stars from gobbysreviews. Buy a copy today and ENJOY!

gobby
Book Reviewer at Marathon Branch Library (Retired)

I bought this book as a text book for a college course that I was taking. Text books have a tendancy to be dry and boring, however, I found this book to be humorous. The lessons teach you step by step how to build a website. You can find inserts in the book that teach you advanced material based off of the basics that are given in the previous chapters.

There are references to the authors website in the book. The website is a great companion to the book, there is a lot of knowledge on his website as well.

Have fun programing!

This is a great how-to book for web design. Easy to read with wonderful graphics. It takes you though the basics into advanced designs. It assumes that you are a novice, with all the details included. However, experienced web designers would benefit from this book if they have only used canned software. Gaskill's details will help you to customize your design. I actually started with his first book many years ago in my quest to designing a better web page.

This ia a really fun book. Most of TCL books will cover the language or how to build pretty grahical programs, but this books emphasis in on the web. In the scope of the web, the book has many sections including: (1) SafeTCL, (2) CGI Scripting, (4) Servlets, (5) TCL Web Server, (6) Client side scripting, (7) document processing with XML, (8) Java Intigration. This book offers so much.

I really like how the authors started off with SafeTCL as a way to firewall your code taht could potentially be attacked by hackers. I was touched by the coverage of Tclets and TCL Netscape plug-in. This stuff was really cool, as it is a way to reuse code on the client browser, but also offer ways to interact with JavaScript. Some really neat stuff.

I highly recommend this book for anyone that likes to tinker and do really cool things with little effort involved. It is also great I think for in house applications or testing tools that could be deployed via the web or to the desktop on just about any platform (Unices, Windows, Mac). The document processing section, and also make TCL into a powerful set of resources for a variety of enterprise solutions as well.

You can accomplish everything you want on the web, on both the client and server sides, without leaving this book, or Tcl. There are a huge number of web development tools out there, and a confusing variety of techniques for web page development and for web server management. After reading this book my decision was clear. I use the Web Tcl Server which I down-loaded and booted first shot. Instead of having to juggle a number of techniques I can now just stick to Tcl. It is the common glue across the company and it is also liberating. People can use their own tools to create various aspects of the web site and yet central policies can be maintained. For example, everyone can use their favorite word processors instead of being forced to use a Web management tool such as Front Page that is universally hated. Get this book. It will be the shortest route you can take to complete control of your web site.

this is not my first TCL book. if u are looking for a TCL book to learn, I recommend Practical Programming in Tcl & Tk by Brent B. Welch .

nonetheless, Web TCL complete does live up to its name and covers practically almost all (if not all) things revolving around using TCL for the web.

get this book if u are interested in getting up to speed regarding using TCL for web base development.

My only wish (not complaint) is I hope that it can be priced lower.

Overall rATE of the book: 5
AN excellent book and it does a great job of explaining the concepts to a beginner like me. There are a lot of solved examples that can walk the beginners through the steps. the book is well written and well structured.

Instructional rate of the books: 5
the book has good worked out or simple examples to do the things of interest. they also have screen prints of the menu for better benefit.

Reference value of the book: 4.

The book is well written and well structured. the book has a lot of sample code, solved examples and screen prints about configuring the server.

The books in its later chapters covers advanced topics such as creation of an entity bean, maintaining its statelessness, and using Java messaging services for real world applications.

the author has done an excellent job in creating this book for users of the weblogic server. I sincerely thank the author for making this book available for users like me.

If you are new to WebLogic or EJB 2.0 and want to learn either or both, there are few better hands-on learning source than this. You do need solid foundation on J2EE/EJB first, though. The author explains really well how's and why's of doing things certain ways and gives many useful tips associated with implementing EJB2.0 - especially on the Container Managed Relationship (CMR). The provided source programs are great too. As they say, you only learn by doing it. This one is highly recommended.

This workbook is a companion guide to the book Enterprise JavaBeans (3rd edition) published by O'Reilly and written by Richard Monson-Haefel. This workbook walks the reader through installing and configuring WebLogic 6.1 as well as deploying the examples described in the EJB book.

This is a very readable book that explains some of the WebLogic-specific requirements as well as best practices for dealing with EJB's (EJB 2.0 spec) in a WebLogic environment. I highly recommend this book for anyone working with EJB's on the WebLogic application server.

This WebLogic 6.1 Workbook was originally published by Enterprise JavaBeans author Richard Monson-Haefel's Titan Books publishing company. O'Reilly bought the rights to publish it and order to open it up for a wider audience

I saw this book on a friends desk and shamelessly took it before he had a chance to read it. I have many php books on my bookshelf, too many. I can now remove quite a few and replace them with this book.

When I first glanced through this book, I was intrigued by the way it was laid out. There are 12 chapters covering many topics that php programmers should know about their language and how browsers interact with a web server using php. Each chapter has many sections that cover a specific topic and most have very useful code examples. The extra feature is a part labeled: "What can go Wrong?". This is a great time saver on how to deal with common issues that might come up when you are working on your php script and implementing the example code. Most of the issues have really good explanations of how and why something could go wrong. What makes this book a real keeper is that they have the "why" explanations. I've always hated it when books tell you to do something a certain way, but never go into any depth on WHY you should do it one way or another. This book has the WHY covered very well for a great number of the examples.

The style of the book makes it easy to read and learn from the examples. In my case, it makes it easy to pickup, read a few pages when I get the chance and then put it down again. I find it easy to pick up right where I left off and keep reading right on to the next example. I like the humor level too. Often authors can get a little too cutesy with their wit and humor. I find that to be a real turn off. William and Brian (The authors) do a great job of keeping the humor light and laughable.

I just made some room on my busy book shelf for this book of 76 time-saving, problem-solving php scripts. I hope my friend doesn't ask for it back...

'Wicked Cool PHP: Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems' is a fantastic PHP cookbook that is written exactly the way I like books to be written:

- it's fun to read and learn from
- content is broken up logically at the right points
- layout and design is a joy on the eyes and brain
- length is around 200 pages which is within the 2-3 (hundred) range that I like most books to be

Content is broken up over 12 chapters:

01. Basic script stuff
02. Configuring PHP
03. PHP Security
04. Form Fun
05. Text & HTML
06. Dates
07. Files
08. User and Session Tracking
09. Email Excitement
10. Image Tasks
11. Using cURL to talk to web services
12. Other Stuff

The audience for this book hits the rare area of ALL developers from the expert to the newbie to the weekend hacker. There are 76 scripts contained within that nearly anyone could find useful in any project.

I love No Starch books because they don't feel like reference materials, rather they package it in a fun way from the glossy cover to smart design. No Starch gets 'it' when it comes to what geeks want and PHPites you will WANT this book!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

PHP is an easy scripting language for creating web features, but like any software it has its quirks. That's where WICKED COOL PHP: REAL-WORLD SCRIPTS THAT SOLVE DIFFICULT PROBLEMS comes into play. It's for those who have some experience with the scripting program but need more specifics to tweak applications. From scripts to process credit cards, template HTML and serve dynamic images to tracking visitors with cookies and editing images and text, WICKED COOL PHP is packed with tips and comes from two experienced PHP developers: perfect for any computer collection catering to PHP users.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I got this book expecting that it would just sit on my shelf most of the time. I'm a DBA, not a developer, and was really just getting this so I would have it to thumb through every now and then. When I opened it, I started looking through some of the chapters, and couldn't put it down. I read 5 chapters that first night, and went back again and again. The author clearly knows this technology, and has a very relaxed, smooth style. He also has a very educated sense of humor that reminds me a bit of Dennis Miller. You will not be bored reading this book. I was also impressed with the level of depth he was able to reach in a book that was supposed to only survey the material. I found myself sitting at my server with the book in my lap trying the things in each chapter. I have a basic knowledge of a lot of the technologies in this book, but I had no idea how much I didn't know. This isn't the only book you'll need to finish a project, but even if you've been developing for years, you'll learn quite a bit that you never thought possible. The reference sections in the back are incredible too. Very complete.

I really enjoyed the section on DHTML, and XML. I have been writing with DHTML for quite some time, and it's one of those things I just memorized, but this book actually explains so many things, I find myself going back over my own code and actually understanding why I had to do things the way I did. Don't even get me started on the JavaScript section. Is there anything this guy doesn't know? My only real complaint is that the publishers didn't contract him for a sequel. This is a book that could easily be split into 2-3 different volumes, and I firmly believe that the author could more than fill them up. Trust me, he is a true master of his craft, and even if you're old-hat at most of this, you will still learn enough to make the cost of this book worth your while. Tom Yager really went out of his way on this one, and he really understands what people need/want in a book on web development. I sincerely hope he writes another.

This book is targeted at a technical person, who doesn't have extensive exposure to Microsoft Technologies. As a software architect coming from a Unix/C++ & NT/Java background, this book gave me enough background to feel confident in building architectural prototypes using Microsoft Technologies.

The flow of the book is very good, transitioning from major section to section with little difficulty. This book is not a reference book on any of the technologies mentioned on the cover! It is a great overview of each topic and how they inter-relate.

The downside of this book is that it doesn't go into enough detail in some areas. To actually begin implementing some of the ideas, you need another teaching aid to learn the Microsoft Tool in question. Fortunately, the book offers pointers to good references on each of the tools described.

All in all this book was a very thorough, easy read giving a great overview of the current state of the art in Microsoft System Architecture.

I got this book expecting that it would just sit on my shelf most of the time. I'm a DBA, not a developer, and was really just getting this so I would have it to thumb through every now and then. When I opened it, I started looking through some of the chapters, and couldn't put it down. I read 5 chapters that first night, and went back again and again. The author clearly knows this technology, and has a very relaxed, smooth style. He also has a very educated sense of humor that reminds me a bit of Dennis Miller. You will not be bored reading this book. I was also impressed with the level of depth he was able to reach in a book that was supposed to only survey the material. I found myself sitting at my server with the book in my lap trying the things in each chapter. I have a basic knowledge of a lot of the technologies in this book, but I had no idea how much I didn't know. This isn't the only book you'll need to finish a project, but even if you've been developing for years, you'll learn quite a bit that you never thought possible. The reference sections in the back are incredible too. Very complete.

I really enjoyed the section on DHTML, and XML. I have been writing with DHTML for quite some time, and it's one of those things I just memorized, but this book actually explains so many things, I find myself going back over my own code and actually understanding why I had to do things the way I did. Don't even get me started on the JavaScript section. Is there anything this guy doesn't know? My only real complaint is that the publishers didn't contract him for a sequel. This is a book that could easily be split into 2-3 different volumes, and I firmly believe that the author could more than fill them up. Trust me, he is a true master of his craft, and even if you're old-hat at most of this, you will still learn enough to make the cost of this book worth your while. Tom Yager really went out of his way on this one, and he really understands what people need/want in a book on web development. I sincerely hope he writes another.

This book discusses and compares WIN32 API programming and MFC programming throughout the book. I haven't yet had time to read the entire book but I hope to as it is relevant to programming any version of Windows, at least at the GUI/Application level. There is a Windows 2000 version of this book and I found it lacking in some of the topics that this book presents - this book is considerably larger as well and is a good investment.
It also come with the sample programs on CD ROM and at least one
of these is written in WIN32 API C and MFC as well.

Excellent source of reference for the Win32 API and MFC and how to apply them in developing applications for Windows.

This might not be the best book on Windows programming out there, but I gave it 5 stars because it lives up to its promises (mostly).

I have two main complaints, however: (1) "Windows 98" is a misnomer, since the book is really about Windows programming for any version. (2) The authors supposedly tell you how to "make the best use" of MFC, but they mostly try to avoid MFC as far as they can, even if it seems more appropriate. (3) I was surprised to see no treatment of DirectX in the whole PART devoted to graphics programming...

Still, the book is informative, and covers broad terrirotry (though in shallow detail at times). The CD-ROM contains all the source code - ALL of it works! In fact, the compiled versions are on the CD-ROM too.

I purchased this book primarily to use only 2 chapters. But in glancing over its introduction, I found it so much more clear and concise than any other book I've used that I am actually reading it cover-to-cover. I have a small library of books on NT and networking topics, but none covers even the most complex issues - TCP/IP, WINS, DHCP, RRAS - with such clarity or with such a focus upon essential and useful information. As another reviewer says, you'll keep looking at this one so often that you might wear it out.

This book is a "Must Have" for any Admin that must work with NT 4 in a mixed invironment. It covers connectivity into UNIX, SNA, and Novell worlds with great details. Writen in a "First Person" format it is quite easy for anyone to understand. I had the good fortune to work hand in hand with Marc Bush the contributor to the Novell information in the book, and found multiple answer's, based on his input to issues I hit when integrating the NT and Novell servers I own.

Regardless of wether you're new to NT and networking or an old hand, this book is a must have. The author takes you by the hand and from scratch has you put together a professional working network in no time at all. Well written, clear, concise, can't say enough about this book. It takes a practical approach to the problem of networking.

I learned X-Windows programming from this many years ago. Please bear with me as I set up the scenario here. As an independent consultant, I was in a situation where--in order to win a juicy federal contract--I had to represent that I was sufficiently expert in X-Windows to (a) build a toolkit of custom widgets; (b) build tools that allowed users to choose from a set of predefined "color palettes" such that (b-i) only certain classes (let's call them "Brand Q") of applications followed those palettes, other applications following the standard system palette, and (b-ii) the palettes interacted with the window manager such that, when the last Brand Q application was iconified, the standard system palette was restored, yet, as soon as any Brand Q application was deiconified, the user's chosen palette was reinstantiated; and (c) build tools that enabled a Certified Professional Ergonomist, or CPE (!), to experiment with widget appearances and parameters so as to craft an optimal set of palettes and then represent those palettes in such a way that X applications would properly follow what was visually intended. Oh, on top of all that, it had to interact with a visual GUI builder called UIM/X that implemented a whole set of "shadow widgets" that paralleled Motif widgets and let you edit their properties--rather like a Java "bean editor" one might find useful nowadays.

Well, I had to learn enough to write a thick, highly literate design document within a couple of weeks, and then go out and build some 40K lines' worth of applications code (in C, of course) and 15K lines' worth of "system" code (I'd define as "systems code" software that (a) interacts with the window manager vis-a-vis iconification and deiconification semantics; (b) communicates complex data structures via interning atoms with the X server; (c) tortures strange color mapping behaviors from an outdated NCR monitor that could only physically display sixteen colors at a time [thus having to rely on dithering and related visual effects to achieve other "colors"] and offers tools for related colormap management tasks) within a handful of months.

Now, I'm not complaining about the level of effort--given the six-figure consulting fee that lay at the end of the rainbow. But without Young's outstanding book, I'd have been dead in the water. Oh, of course I had access to the O'Reilly series of seven or eight books--which were occasionally useful for stealing a handy application that could quickly be incrementally modified (e.g., I needed quick code for a dialogue box managing three green buttons, and one of the O'Reilly books illustrated the code for a dialogue box sporting four yellow buttons). But Young taught me enough about X that I was soon empowered to write my own functions to populate recursive pull-down menus; to write the internals for a widget that borrowed functionality from two other widgets and used cutesy memory management tricks (akin to mainframe-lingo "lookaside buffers") that let me sequentially stack up their respective resources; and to learn how to take advantage of some interesting internals facts, e.g., that the XmN family of symbolic constants are defined as strings identical to their names (a la #define foo #foo).

Bravo, Mr. Young! You taught me much, and you taught me well.

This well written book, with numerous coded examples (that work!) is one of the best computer reference book I've encountered. Although it has not been updated to included Motif 2.1, most applications are still being written in Motif 1.2 anyway. It also includes the necessary Xt and X11 background to write GUIs. I went from zero experience with windows programming to writing full featured X-windows applications solely with the aid of this text and elementary knowledge of C. The author, who worked at Silicon Graphics, went on to write the Open Inventor library (which unfortunately is in C++). Great book!

Once upon a time, when I moved from Windows programming environment to X-Windows.. I found things were so diffiult for me.

Lucky me, one day I went to the library and found this book. It helped me to get start with X programming in s considerable short time. The step of this book is quite easy to follow, and not difficult to understand. At least it made X more friendly to me. Although it was Japanese edition and my Japanese isn't that good. (And I will buy the English edition soon).

If you want to program in X, this one is a must, Along O'Reilly X Reference Series (which I think is the best of X-Ref).

This book is a must for anyone interested in Topic Maps. It would certainly pay to have some familiarity with XML, URIs, etc, because otherwise the examples will be hard going. If you do know XML, then you'll be away, because XTM is a very small and simple vocabulary.

Each chapter is by a different author, and each one comes at the subject from a different angle. Topics covered include tutorials for using the XTM specification, topic maps for website Information Architecture, Knowledge Representation, Ontological Engineering, e-learning, visualisation, relationship to RDF, information about various software implementations (a bit dated now, but still valuable), as well as sample topic maps and XSLT code.

Because of the diverse - even contradictory - viewpoints, the book as a whole provides an excellent overview of the field.

Since Tim Berners-Lee wrote of the Semantic Web
several years ago, there has been speculation about
how we might embed meaning within Web pages, as
opposed to merely displaying content. To answer this,
XML offers the separation of content from display.
From its user definable tags, different user
communities can define their own sets of tags and
associate meaning with those. XML offers the
infrastructure. But it is still fairly low level.
Assembler language, as it were, compared to more
powerful languages like C or Java.

So if XML is like an assembler, what is the analog of
C? This book puts forward XTM, XML Topic Maps, as the
answer. It consists of 17 chapters by different
authors, outlining various aspects of XTM. The
chapters can be divided into two types.

One type has nitty gritty explanations, replete with
examples of XTM written in XML. If you are a
programmer, these chapters are for you. There are web
sites listed with XTM definitions that you can

incorporate into your XTM, just like using standard
namespaces available on the web in normal XML.

The other chapters deal with the much deeper and
harder problem of how XTM may be used for Knowledge
Organisation and Knowledge Representation. They are
high level and abstruse, edging up to the issues of
semiotics and artificial intelligence.

As a side note: In the XTM examples and
implementations given, I was surprised to see no
mention of altavista's graphical representation of

search results, circa 1998. This was not in XTM, but
it conveyed the flavour. What happened was that if you
searched for, say, 'tornado', the results would appear
as a graph. The nodes would be the main keywords in
the documents containing 'tornado'. Nodes would be
connected to each other if documents contained both
those words. In this case, one might see two non
intersecting clusters - one related to weather
patterns, and the other to jet planes. By clicking on
a node, you could expand it into finer grained graphs.
It complements this book, whose main thrust is in
manually describing XML documents in an XTM format,
because it could achieve much the same visual results,
but derived automatically from arbitrary web pages.

In order to fully appreciate this book you will need a good working knowledge of XML and associated W3G documents, and more than a casual exposure to knowledge management. The first four chapters are a blend of historical information about XTM (XML topic maps) and fundamental technical information that describes design rationale and components of XTM (which is a separate open source initiative that is based on the ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps standard).

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 dive into the mechanics of XTM and knowledge management, and requires the prerequisite knowledge I cited above. This part of the book is not an easy read. This is not a reflection of the authors/editors ability to write as much as it is of the nature of the material. Knowledge management and development issues are given both wide and deep treatment in these chapters. Chapters 8 and 9 go deeper into the XML family as they relate to XTM (with an emphasis on XSLT), and address creating and maintaining sites that use XTM/XSLT as the core of a knowledge management strategy.

Related topics are covered in Chapters 10 through 13, including open source tools, RDF (widely used as a mechanism for weblogs and blogs that are gaining popularity), and semantic networks (intelligent agent-based systems). The final two chapters tie together the preceding material with a chapter devoted to topic map fundamentals for knowledge representation and a chapter about topic maps in knowledge organizations.

If you are interested in using an XML-like technology as the foundation of a knowledge management strategy, or are interested in learning about new directions in the integration of web technologies and knowledge management this book is ideal. For the technical reader the code examples, pointers to open source and commercial solutions and the website that supports this book (using topic maps, of course), this book is an excellent way to leverage knowledge of XML and use it to develop knowledge management solutions.